Field of Dreams
by La Guera
Summary: Baseball is the stuff of magic and dreams, and Don Flack, Jr. has always loved it. It is the one thread between him and his aloof father that has never been broken, even after all else has slipped away. But every magic and all dreams fade if left untended


Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No profit is being made, and no infringement is intended. For entertainment only. Diana Flack has no precedent in the CSI:NY universe and is a product of my imagination.

Written for Aureliapriscus and the Fic Gueraerobics 2006 Challenge. The prompts were Flack, baseball, and pre-show, and this was the result. I hope you enjoy it, my fellow Flackolyte.

While her part is negligible at best, this story refers to a Flack sibling that does not exist in canon. If OCs offend thee, please exit to the rear and stay in your lane. There is no need to pee in my pool. Feedback and constructive criticism are appreciated and encouraged. Flames are not.

His butt was firmly planted in Seat 23, Row 87 of Yankee Stadium, but Don Flack, Jr. was ten years and three rows over. There was a heavyset man in a grey Yankees sweatshirt and a Fuck You hat in the seat now, mustard smeared on his wobbling chin, but when he was ten years old, he had sat in that seat beside his father, swinging his legs in a lazy, pendulous arc and scuffing the toes of his sneakers in the debris of crumpled peanut bags and cigarette butts lurking beneath his seat.

It was his first ballgame, and he'd spent the week leading up to it in an agony of anticipation, scarcely daring to breathe its name lest it prove to be wistful illusion. He'd held his breath each time the phone rang, sure that it was his father's captain, calling to tell him that all leaves were canceled, the better to scour the city for some lunatic on the lam. He'd watched the weather forecasts with the fervid devotion of the fanatic, ragged-nailed fingers kneading a pillow to ward off approaching storm systems. He'd even helped Diana with her spelling homework after Father Carmichael told him God rewarded good works. He was taking no chances.

After his mother tucked him into bed at night, he'd slipped from beneath the covers and tiptoed to the dresser drawer where he'd stashed his ticket. He'd sat cross-legged on the floor by the door and studied it by the feeble illumination from the hall light his mother left on for his baby sister, traced his sturdy fingers along the sharp corners and raised it to his nose to sniff the ink. It had been sharp and crisp in his nostrils, pine shavings and cardboard and burnt sienna, and absolutely magical, the Yonkers equivalent of a Golden Ticket.

There had been other smells as well, faint hints of perfumed promise. The yeasty tang of beer and the high, sweet scent of cut grass. Freshly tamped earth and rosin and rich warmth of boiled peanuts. The acrid odor of cigarette smoke and the spicy musk of his father's aftershave.

Now he knew it was all bullshit, that he had never really smelled those things on the ticket, but back then, he'd still been willing to give old St. Nick the benefit of the doubt, and anyway, Yankee Stadium was Shangri-La, the field of every young boy's dreams. There was magic in the grass of the outfield and the heaped dirt of the pitcher's mound, and it could be accessed if you believed hard enough. Grandpa Flack had delighted in telling him times beyond memory-probably because his own memory had turned traitor and was deserting him with each rising and setting of the sun-about the time Babe Ruth had hit three homeruns in a single day on that fabled green, and he himself had watched Don Mattingly swing for the fences from the comfort of his living room, hunched in front of the television and chewing distractedly on his long-suffering nails. Yankee Stadium was New York Disneyland.

When the day of the ballgame had finally arrived, he'd awakened long before his mother's six o'clock reveille of tapping on his bedroom door and admonishing him to get ready for school. He'd told himself that it was ridiculous to get so excited, that it was dangerous, even, because odds were that his old man would forget or cancel like he usually did, but it did no good. Neither did telling himself that only pansy pussy babies cared about going out with their fathers. It was too sweet, too tantalizing, this possibility. He was going to a ballgame at Yankee Stadium, not at that piece of shit, Shea Stadium, where the sorry-ass Mets played, and if digging that made him a pansy pussy baby, who cared?

The only caveat was that he had to go to school first, and so he'd trudged out the door with his backpack slung over one shoulder and Diana's hand in his own and set off for PS 732, convinced that God could devise no torment crueler than a history lesson on the Iroquois nation when there was baseball beckoning him from beyond the dingy, squared-paned windows of the classroom. It had been mid-September, and the leaves had crunched beneath his feet as he walked, dry and brittle and chitinous as carapace. The wind had been cool on his cheeks, but not yet harsh, and the air was tangy with the scent of car exhaust and burning leaves reduced to embers in guttering barrels. Most of the time, he hated the drabness and withering erosion of autumn, but on that day, with his baby sister ambling along him and the prospect of a ballgame looming on the near horizon with the enticing twinkle of promised bounty, he had felt an exhilarating rush of bonhomie.

Diana was beside him, chattering about her spelling test and that creepy kid, Johnny Ramos, who sat behind her and tried to wipe his boogers in her hair, but he had been scarcely listening. His mind had been abuzz with thoughts of fly balls and ground outs and the syrupy fizz of soda on his teeth. Ma didn't like him to have pop, said it rotted his teeth, but maybe Pop would let him have one.

"He almost got me last week," Diana had whined, and shuddered.

"Kick him in the privates next time," he'd muttered, and tightened his grip on her hand as he prepared to step off the curb.

She'd considered that. "Can't. I might get sent to the principal's office, and Daddy would get mad. 'Sides, how do you know he's got privates? Don't you gotta be older to get boy privates?" She'd peered curiously at him.

He'd looked both ways and tugged her in his wake as he crossed the street. "That's stupid, Di," he'd snorted contemptuously. "Everybody's got privates all the time. You don't get 'em, like, as Christmas presents. You gotta. Otherwise, how would you pee? It'd get all backed up in there, and you'd blow up or somethin. I saw a slug explode once." He hadn't known why he'd added that last. It had sounded impressive.

"Oh." She'd kicked a squashed styrofoam cup with the toe of her shoe and watched it fall prey to the front tire of a passing delivery truck. "D'you think it hurts to get kicked in the privates?"

He'd shrugged. "I dunno. Prob'ly. It hurts when you get hit there in dodgeball."

He'd accrued _that_ nasty tidbit of knowledge in recess a few weeks back. The teacher had wanted to send him to the nurse, but she might have called his ma, and so he'd sworn he was all right and spent the remainder of the hour doubled over on the bench with his arms crossed over his throbbing, breathless stomach, blinking back tears and trying desperately not to vomit onto his sneakers. Better than being called a whiny baby for running home to his mama.

Thankfully, Diana had opted not to pursue that line of questioning, a rare display of sibling tact for which he was furtively and profoundly grateful. Instead, she'd pulled her hand from his, tugged her My Little Pony backpack onto one thin shoulder and said, "You don't gotta hold my hand no more. Ma can't see us, and I ain't a baby."

"Yeah, I do. Ma says you might get run over by a truck 'cause you never look where you're goin'. Now, gimme your hand."

"I do too look," Diana had retorted indignantly. "But they gotta wait for me. It says so. Pedalstriands have the right of way."

He'd pursed his lips. "Do you even know what that means?" he'd asked shrewdly.

"Yeah." But there had been no certainty in her reply, and she'd refused to meet his gaze.

"'S what I thought." He'd smirked. "Now c'mon." He'd made a grab for her hand.

Diana had been lithe and skinny as a snake even then, and she'd avoided his grasp with a serpentine twist of her gangly limbs. "No. I ain't no baby. Do _you _know what it means?"

"What what means?" He'd reached for her hand again, only to be met with a flailing kick to the shins. "Ouch. What was that for?"

"Pedalstriands," she'd said mulishly.

"You kicked me 'cause of pedestrians?"

"No, stupid. I kicked you 'cause I ain't no baby. I knew you didn't know what it means."

He'd rolled his eyes. "It means people who walk down the street."

"Oh." Crestfallen, and he'd taken advantage of the fact that she'd been momentarily stunned by his brilliance to seize her by the wrist.

"And ain't ain't a word. Quit screwin' around. You're gonna make us late."

She'd uttered an eloquent harrumph of sullen acquiescence and made a half-hearted attempt at stomping his foot, but for all intents and purposes, the insurrection had been over and she'd let him lead her to the squat, brooding bunker that housed the hallowed halls of education. The façade was pitted and disfigured with soot and graffiti, joyous as a military bunker, and the windows of the uppermost floor were cataracted with grime and thick, corroding lashes of iron.

Children had already been swarming up the worn stone steps and into the open double doors. Mr. Widderman, the principal, stood at the doors, tall and reedy in his white, button-down shirt and ugly, broad-striped tie, a pencil protruding meekly from behind one small, perpetually-reddened ear. He raised a hand when he saw them hanging by the wrought-iron fence on the school's perimeter, and Don, who thought Mr. Widderman resembled a small and vicious weasel, gave a desultory wave in return. Diana only scowled and moved closer to him.

"I thought you weren't a baby," he'd said, but he'd made no move to push her away.

"I'm not, but he smells like lentils." Her mouth had puckered in a moue of distaste.

_How do you know? _he'd wondered, but before he could broach the subject further, she'd pointed an accusatory finger at a boy on the bottommost riser of the steps. "That's the boy who wipes his snot rockets in my hair."

Johnny Ramos, despoiler of innocent hair, had been a runty, bow-legged kid, dressed in a grungy sweatshirt two sizes too large and battered sneakers whose toes were held together with gray packing tape, and even from that distance, Don had known how he would smell, overripe citrus and unwashed body, grease and old sweat and unbrushed teeth. Ramos had turned on the step, as if he had sensed the scrutiny, and had smiled, a vague, lupine leer that had revealed uneven teeth already rotting from the inside out.

_He's one of them, _he'd thought, and instinctively stepped between his sister and Ramos' line of sight. _One of them Latch Key kids. Ain't nobody lookin' out for him. He probably comes home to an empty apartment and wakes up to screaming or smashing windows or the sounds of what Mikey Dolan calls knockin' boots. Don't think he's changed clothes in three days, and if he got into the tub now, there'd be nothin' left but fingernails and toenails and a pair of blinking, befuddled eyeballs floatin' dreamily on top of the soapscum. No one tells him to wash behind his ears or to eat his oatmeal even if it tastes like paste because there's starvin' kids in China. No one tells him much of anything. He lives off Snickers and flat pop, and picks the lice out of his dirty hair just for fun._

He supposed he should feel pity for the kid, the latchkey goblin with no one to care where he went or what he did or ate or wanted to be, but there had been only a mortified revulsion. It wasn't the dirty face or the unwashed, matted hair or the funk that wafted from his pores in a miasmic wave. It was his eyes. They weren't wall-eyed or cross-eyed or rolling wildly in their sockets, but there was something amiss all the same. They were too old for his face, possessed of a terrible, secretive knowledge, and cunning.

"He's gross," Diana had declared, and he had heard the same revulsion in her voice.

"He's a pissant," he'd told her, and made a mental note to track the kid down on the playground and rub his face in the concrete the next time he got any bright ideas about the proper place for his boogers.

"Ooh," Diana had exclaimed, scandalized, "you aren't s'posed to cuss."

"Yeah, well, no one'll know if you don't tell," he'd pointed out, and prayed that she wouldn't. If she did, it would be so long, baseball, and he'd spend the rest of his evening and several nights thereafter scrubbing the fire escape with a toothbrush while Pop watched the game on the TV, taking pulls from a longneck and crunching cocktail peanuts between coffee-stained teeth.

She hadn't answered right away, and he'd seen the cogs grinding in her head as she'd pondered how best to turn the situation to her advantage.

"Okay," she'd said at length. "But only if you promise to make Johnny quit puttin' boogers in my hair."

"Deal. Now ya better get goin', or you're gonna be late."

She had turned and trotted to the steps, and then she had stopped, one foot planted on the step and body turned toward him. "You're gonna be waitin' for me after school, right?"

"Naw, not today. Mrs. Lipshitz is walkin' you home today. I got somethin' I gotta do."

"I don' wanna walk home with Mrs. Lipshitz," Diana had wailed. "She smells like cabbage, and she always makes me go to the market with her and asks if I needa go to the bathroom."

"Well, you gotta," he'd said stubbornly.

He could hardly blame her for her underwhelming enthusiasm for the prospect of an afternoon with their elderly neighbor. Mrs. Lipshitz was north of eighty, and deaf as a post. She spent the majority of her time puttering around her apartment and listening to the television at a volume calculated to burst eardrums and provoke insanity within minutes. She was also keenly interested in the state of people's bathroom habits and was only too happy to discuss them in excruciating detail in public. He and Diana had once spent an enlightening evening in her company, listening to the Great Impaction of '64, and after she was done describing the horror, he had decided that broccoli wasn't so bad, after all.

"Why I gotta?" Diana had demanded, hands fisted on her hips and eyes blazing. "I didn' do nothin' bad."

"I know you didn'," he had explained patiently. "But Pop is takin' me to see the Yankees today after school."

"Nuh huh!" Then, "I wanna go, too."

"You can't."

"Why not?"

"Because-," He'd floundered helplessly. "Because you're a girl," he'd finished lamely. "Girls don't like sports."

"So?" she'd cried. "You like to cook, and cookin's for girls."

"Is not!" he'd shouted, appalled that she would insinuate he was a girly boy. "Aunt Lucia says lots of guys are chefs."

"Uncle Petey says they're all light in the loofahs. I don't know why they'd have shower scrubbies in the kitchen, though." Her brow had furrowed as she'd considered the conundrum. "Maybe they clean fish with 'em." She'd shrugged, and then her eyes had clouded. "I wanna go." Pleading then.

"You can't. Pop only got two tickets," he'd said quietly.

"Oh."

He'd been alarmed to see that she'd been perilously close to tears. "'S okay. I'll bring you back some Cracker Jacks or somethin'. Maybe I'll even catch a pop up, an' you c'n touch it."

She'd sniffled. "Don' care about a pop-up." She'd wiped her nose with the back of her hand and turned away. "Probably won't even show up anyway," she'd muttered, and trudged up the steps to disappear inside the school.

He'd known why she'd said it-Pop had a stellar track record of blowing off prior engagements in favor of the station house-but he'd resented her for so glibly giving voice to the gnawing fear in the pit of his belly, and so he had forgotten all about his promise to set Johnny Ramos' record straight, opting instead to re-enact historic moments not yet lived in the corner of the schoolyard with Carmine Bratzzi and Jimmy Monaghan. He'd caught fly balls and pulled scorching double-plays to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and when Mr. Rettinger had summoned them back inside, he'd been sweaty and gritty and deliriously happy, and the capering demon of doubt that nested in his chest and the base of his brain had been temporarily bested.

It had rallied by the afternoon history lecture, however, and while Mr. Rettinger had waxed rhapsodic about the wonders of maize and the Iroquois culture, he'd cast covert glances out the smudged window in an attempt to see if his father's black-and-white was pulling up to the curb and willed the clock to keep pace with his feverish will. But time had proven recalcitrant and indifferent to his agony, and the last ten minutes of the day had stretched like molasses between the minute and second hands of the clock. He'd been convinced that the threading needle of the second hand, in a bit of mischief, stopped whenever he drew breath, and so he'd held his breath for the last ninety seconds in an effort to spur it along and nearly succeeded in giving himself an embolism.

Then the bell had sounded his liberation, and he'd been out of his desk and around the corner, arms pumping and feet flying, the latter dreaming of grass as they slapped the ugly, industrial terrazzo of the school hallway. He'd shouldered past the bigger boys and dodged the smaller ones, heedless of their quizzical faces as he passed. The damned old Iroquois Indians had been returned to the dusty tomb of the history book, and he was free. He was going to see the Yankees with his old man and get the smell of rosin and boiled peanuts and freshly cut grass in his nose.

He'd exploded through the front doors and thundered down the steps two at a time, a victorious war whoop on his lips, and then he'd frozen, the jubilant cry lodged in his throat like a clot of congealed mucus, because there had been no sign of his father. He'd looked up and down the street, eyes squinted and straining for a glimpse of black-and-white car or the telltale glimmer of blue-and-red lights in the distance, but the only cars on the block had been the boxy, inelegant station wagons of the mothers who had come to collect their broods.

_Diana was right, _he'd thought, and his heart had dropped like a stone inside his aching chest. _He's not comin'. He's been held up at a scene, or his watch commander held him over. I'm just gonna stand here until one of the teachers notices, and then they'll drag me to the office and call my ma, and she'll come get me and make excuses for him all the way home until he comes home and gives me his own. He'll ruffle my hair and call me Sport and offer some platitude about catchin' bad guys. Then he'll plop into his easy chair with a beer, and that will be that, and Ma will come into my room later to clean up his mess like she always does._

_Or maybe he just doesn't care, _the demon had murmured gleefully, and his hands had clenched into white-knuckled fists. _He knows perfectly well he's supposed to be here now; he just doesn't give a damn. He's down at the precinct with his cronies, feet up on the desk, and he's shooting the breeze with the duty clerk or the property room clerk. Talkin' pervs and rapists and thieves is more fun than dealing with his snot-nosed kid for four hours on a Wednesday afternoon, just like it was more fun than showin' up to your sister's piano recital or your birthday earlier this year. He wanted to be a cop, trained for it since he was in short pants, as he's fond of telling you, but he never planned on either of you. Both of you were accidents of moral obligation, and not happy ones._

He could see it all on the vivid canvas of his mind's eye. His father's leather-soled feet propped on the desk, flecked with grit from the city streets. His hands were interlaced behind his head, and his uniform cap was canted forward atop his head to shield his eyes from the sunlight streaming through the blinds into the dreary bullpen. He was discussing the aforementioned pervs and rapists and thieves, oh, my, with the watch commander. There was a styrofoam cup of cold coffee on the near corner of his desk, and as he extolled the dubious virtues of the drunk drying out in the nearby tank, his eyes darted to the clock that stood watch over the numberless hours on a dingy, yellow wall.

_Sonofabitch, _Don had thought dully, and then been ashamed of himself. That was his father, and he might have been a lot of things, but a son of a bitch wasn't one of them. Sons of bitches robbed and killed and hit girls and made them cry, and his father had never done that. He just caught people who did.

_He made your sister cry, _the demon pointed out, and capered, tiny, pearl-tipped claws sinking salted fire into the tender nape of his neck. _He made her cry plenty on the night he passed up her piano recital in favor of running down a perp who had held up a deli and splattered the elderly owner's brains all over the Gruyere. He'd sworn up, down, and sideways that he'd be there. You know because you were at the dinner table when your mother made him promise, looking back and forth between your parents with a spoonful of mashed potatoes in one hand and your other hand curled around a glass of milk. He promised your mother and sister that he would be there, and then he wasn't._

_She looked for him. Up there on that stupid, cramped, elementary-school stage. She was supposed to be minding her fingers on the keys during her stirring rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but she was distracted by the empty seat between you and your mother, the one that should have been filled with your father's hulking bulk, but filled with your mother's building anger and sour disappointment instead._

_She missed a note or three, but she never gave up, not on your father, and not on the song. She finished the song with a straight face, turned and curtsied like she'd been taught, and exited stage left. It wasn't until she got backstage and discovered he wasn't there, either that she cried, and then she cried hard, wrapped her arms around herself to hold her narrow, little-girl body together and sobbed until she gagged. She'd been telling anyone who would listen that her daddy was coming to see her play, and now all she had to show for her boast was a face covered in snot and pair of tear-swollen eyes._

_You and your ma walked her home, and she wept all the way, hitching her chest and swiping at her leaking nose the way she did this morning when you told her she was the odd girl out. Ma even stopped at the drugstore to buy her an ice cream sandwich, but it didn't help. She just ate and cried, and when she got home, she went straight to her room without brushing her teeth or changing into her pajamas. You followed her and found her curled beneath the covers with that godawful gingham bear your Aunt Lucia made for her birth. _

_You coaxed her out of bed with an invitation to play a few games of checkers or Candyland, and by the time she went to bed for true, she was mostly all right again. Your father couldn't meet her gaze the next morning and sought refuge in the black and white sanctuary of the newspaper, and your mother scrambled his eggs until they confessed his sins with a sizzle and pop of overcooked protein. Diana never said a word. She shoveled Rice Krispies into her mouth with the stolid determination of a convict in a rock quarry and looked anywhere but at her father, who cleared his throat and slurped his coffee in noisy gulps and stole furtive glances at the crown of her head over the pages of the _Times

In truth, you hated your father a little, then. Not much-just a prickle, a grain of sand on your heel-but hate was hate, no matter how infinitesimal. It hadn't been right, your father bowing out on Diana that way. The deli owner was dead, and dead would keep. It was the living who spoiled if left untended for too long. You were already softening, wilting around the edges from his careless inattention to the milestones of your life, but it was all right, because you were accustomed to the empty spaces of his absence.

_But Diana was different. Diana was a girl, and he had told you himself a thousand times that girls were to be treated gently, reverently. Yet he had bruised her just as easily as he'd blooded you, and the morning after, he had the audacity to hide behind his newspaper like a common pussy._

He had smothered _that _line of thought with ruthless efficiency. His old man was not a pussy, and he wasn't a bad guy. He was a cop, and cops made the hard decisions so nobody else would have to. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't kind, but it was the way it was. Diana would understand eventually. Her heart would toughen to cured leather, and she would learn to swallow the constricting scald of disappointment. She would stop caring about whether or not he was in the shadows beyond the stage, and when that day came, she would no longer look for him. It was better in the long run to forget him, to let the sharp angles of his face and the shield on his chest blur to indistinctiveness. It made sleeping easier.

He would tell her that when they got home, would sit her down over a game of Trouble or Yahtzee and explain everything. He would roll the dice and move the pieces around the board, and if the truth grew too bitter for her to swallow, he would offer her a piece of Now and Later candy from the stash underneath his bed to help the medicine go down.

He'd turned on the steps with the intention of finding Diana and walking her home. Pop wasn't coming, and there had been no point in lingering on the steps like a hangdog dweeb. He'd take her by the bodega on the way home and buy them both a slushy. It would make her laugh and turn her tongue red, and it would distract him from the aching knot in his throat.

He'd spared the street one last, doleful glance, and there it had been, a bright, mirror-shard glint of light reflected off polished copper. His father had come ambling down the sidewalk, one hand thrust into the pocket of his uniform pants, the other raised in a hearty, splay-fingered greeting.

"Hey, Donnie boy," he'd bellowed, and doffed his hat.

He'd sprinted down the steps and closed the distance between them in loping, giddy strides. "Dad! Heya, Dad! I didn' think you was comin'."

His father had looked at him from beneath the bill of his cap, blue eyes grave and full mouth twitching with a mischievous smirk. "Not comin', eh?" Light, surprised, but there had been an undercurrent of hurt. "Did you really think I'd miss takin' ya to your first Yanks game?"

He'd looked into those eyes, so clear and startling in their intensity, and that hard, square jaw that he would one day inherit, and though his heart had given one answer, his lips had given another. "Naw. Naw, not really. I just figured you was runnin' late."

His father had studied him for a long time in silence, and his broad, callused hand had reached out to brush a stray strand of hair from his forehead. "Damn right, you did," he'd said gruffly. "You're a smart kid."

Then his father had been ruffling his hair and clapping him on the back and shepherding him down the sidewalk with his arm around his neck, pulling him close and pressing his nose into the soft, sweat-dampened fabric of his shirt. He'd smelled of warm cotton and perspiration and oiled leather, good smells, _safe_ smells, and he'd lingered in the crease of shirt even as his mouth had formed groans of protest.

They'd driven to the game in Pop's old squad car, and he'd been surrounded by those scents again, stronger in the close confines of the car. Dusty vinyl and stale cigarette smoke, old coffee and the faint, ozone tang of radio transmissions. He'd secretly delighted in them, inhaled them with the dainty sniff of a practiced sommelier, and he'd rubbed his sweaty palms against the cracked upholstery to trap them in the pores of his skin. Later that night, long after the crack of the bat was an echoing memory in his mind, he'd pressed his hands to his nose and fallen asleep to the smell of his father.

They'd spent the afternoon in the ballpark, and his father had not only let him have a soda, but he'd bought him a dog with the works, and he'd sat in the seat the fat man in the Fuck You hat now threatened to overwhelm with his bulk, legs swinging and mouth full of chili and relish and mustard. They'd cheered over fly balls and ground-rule doubles, and when the action stalled, Pop had pointed out people in the stands and quizzed him on what he could tell about them just by looking. He'd nudge him in the ribs, point at a fellow spectator, and mutter, "Hey, Donnie, whaddaya see?" and he, Donnie, would turn in his seat, screw up his face, and read the story etched in that person's face and hands.

Sitting in his seat, watching the fat man take a sloppy sip of beer from the plastic cup engulfed by one beefy hand, he thought that night in the ballpark was the night he had decided to follow in his father's footsteps. Until then, the idea of wearing the blue had been a diffuse possibility in the back of his mind, a child's game of cops and robbers played on Sunday afternoons, with Diana tied up on the couch with shoelaces and bedsheets, and his father's badge pinned to his t-shirt as he burst into the living room with a broom handle assault rifle, screaming, "Freeze, NYPD! Put your hands up." He'd planned on being a chef like his ma and Aunt Lucia wanted, cooking pasta and steak tartar for the New York politicos.

Maybe it was the ballpark, or maybe it was simply because that day was the first day his father had shared more than a face and a name with him, but visions of a golden ladle had vanished in the blink of an eye, supplanted by the heft of a nine-millimeter and the crisp, clean scent of starch on his collar. He'd resolved then to be just like his old man, to be strong and brave and chase down the bad people who took what didn't belong to them, be it a TV or a wedding ring or a life. He'd wear the blue and clean his gun and badge daily, and he'd wear the shield with pride.

He hadn't announced his intentions to his father that day. The enormity of the idea had been too much for his child's tongue to articulate, but his Pop must have seen evidence of it in his face, because he'd clapped him on the back and curled his thick, slab-like hand around his neck, and he'd passed the rest of the ballgame nestled in the crook of his father's elbow and against his side, lazily watching the players on their field of dreams.

From then on, baseball had been a common thread between him and his father, a comforting constant amid the uncertain routine of a cop. His father couldn't discuss his cases with his adolescent son, but he could discuss box scores and ERAs and batting averages, and so he did. He'd scrape his soles on the rounded risers on the front stoop as he came inside at the end of his shift, and as he took off his tie and unholstered his gun, he'd ask him about the game the night before. He'd used baseball metaphors to talk about the birds and the bees, and while he'd been better informed about that particular endeavor by the Playboys Jimmy Bratzzi had discovered underneath his older brother's mattress, he'd nodded in all the right places, and that night, he'd dreamed about hitting a grand slam with Jenny Beckham from down the block and awakened with what felt like a Louisville slugger between his legs.

Baseball was the one spidersilk thread of connection that remained to them after all others had broken, after Diana had broken and slipped through his clawing fingers like shards of shattered glass, cutting his heart to ribbons inside his chest. Neither of them could bear to speak of the empty bedroom or the unoccupied chair at the family table that gaped in their midst like a sucking chest wound, and so they spoke-when they spoke at all-of Cy Youngs and League MVPs and pretended that all the pieces had still fit as they ought. Last year at Christmas dinner, the sole topic of conversation had been the Yanks' abysmal performance in the post-season. He'd looked at the space where his sister's chair used to be and still should have been, and his father had looked anywhere he was not. His mother had looked from one to the other in silent fascination, asking now and then if they'd like more mashed potatoes and trying to pretend that the only thing missing was the mistletoe centerpiece that he'd surreptitiously dropped down the trash chute the day before. Her smile had been too tight on her overly-rouged face, a livid, fuschia gash beneath her meticulously powdered nose, and only the implacably rational surety of batting averages had kept the precarious illusion intact.

Baseball was the only thread he had left, and he had traded on it when he had called his father earlier today and invited him to the ballgame. He hadn't known he was going to make the call until the phone was in his grip, tacky with the dried sweat of a thousand hands before his, and he hadn't known what he was going to say until his father's voice had come on the line, laconic and raspy with worry and liberal applications of nicotine. Then he'd been talking, fast and desperate and breathless, praying his smartass mouth and two years of community college education could outrun his cowardice and his galloping heart.

There was no guarantee he would show. He had been noncommittal at best, grunting irascible syllables into the receiver and tapping his pencil against the hard plastic. In all likelihood the ticket he'd left for his him at the box office would go uncollected, but he was determined to tell him to his face that he'd decided to go to the academy, had in fact filled out the paperwork that very morning, etching his name into the paper with such force that he'd broken the lead twice. He owed the old man that much, at least.

_He'll laugh in your face, _sneered the relentless demon, only too happy to find its voice after long years of fitful silence. _He'll laugh in your face and call you a disgrace to the uniform you haven't worn yet. He'll stare at you with those remote, blue eyes, cold as winter hoarfrost, and the condemnation and disappointment that has flickered in them for all these years will still be there. It might even intensify. Sister-killing fuck-ups have no business behind a shield._

He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. There was nothing he could do about that. He didn't want the shield for his old man, anyway. He wanted it for himself, to prove to himself and the world that he could get something right, that he was more than a scared, sixteen-year-old kid with snot in his nose and piss freezing in his jeans.

_Bullshit. You want that shield because it's the one thing in this world your father loves. He'd give his life for it, and more than once, he's bled for it. That piece of copper is a mark of God as far as your father is concerned, and if you can pin it to your chest, then all your sins, earned and undeserved, will be cleansed, and you won't feel the phantom heat of his knuckles across your numb lips or taste the copper of blood on your tongue. You won't hear the agonized shriek of the gurney wheels as the paramedics rolled your sister's body to the ambulance or see the white-shrouded hump that used to laugh and clap her hands and chase the stupid pigeons across the park and beg you to join her in her gleeful pursuit. You won't hear her call you Donnie anymore, and you won't see her in all the empty spaces your parents have tried to paper over by expunging her from the familial record and scouring all traces of her from the apartment. You won't smell her on the breeze or feel her chubby, little-girl hand in yours when you cross the street._

_Well, it doesn't work that way. None of that will ever leave you, her least of all. You earned it that night, and you own it, now and forever. That shield won't change that. That white-sheeted body is your private albatross, and it will follow you to the end of your days because such is the price of failure. The priest had it all wrong, Donnie boy. Hell isn't punishment for the dead; the dead are beyond pain and regret. Hell is for the living, carried in the heart and soul like a time-release capsule, released in a steady trickle that kills with a whisper and a sigh and as painfully as possible, and this is yours._

A sharp, reverberating crack interrupted his thoughts, and for one paralyzed instant, he was sixteen again and staring at his sister's crumpled form at the bottom of the staircase. Then his vision cleared, and he realized that it was only the crack of a bat. He watched as the ball squirted through the infield, a white blur on a smooth mat of green. The first baseman moved to intercept it, glove extended and open as the ball rolled toward his spread and planted feet.

The game was under way, and his father's seat was empty.

He had expected it, but expectation did little to blunt the sharp pang of disappointment that embedded itself in his sternum with the sudden ferocity of a cramp. He turned in his seat and scanned the stairs in search of his father. The only traveler along that path was a candy-striped peanut vendor whose grizzled, hangdog face stood in sharp contrast to his jaunty shirt and crisp, white hat. He caught sight of Don and ambled doggedly up the steps in his direction.

"Peanuts," the vendor called wearily. "Get yer hot, fresh peanuts here!"

_Maybe it's just traffic that's held him up, _asserted a timid, hopeful voice. _Traffic's a bitch, worse than it ever was even ten years ago. If he took a department car, he could be snarled in gridlock. Or maybe he got waylaid down the precinct by some old lady who got her purse snatched. He's prob'ly fillin' out a report. He'll be along soon, one hand in his pocket and the other raised in splay-fingered greeting._

He held on to that delusion until the third inning, when the Yankees were up 1-0 in spite of their best efforts at bumbling ineptitude and the peanut bag on his lap was half-empty. His fingers were dusty with sloughed hull, and his mouth was full of the taste of peat and dried earth. It was not entirely pleasant despite his customary love of peanuts, and he scoured his tongue against the roof of his mouth to cleanse his palate. The seat beside him remained steadfastly unoccupied.

He turned in his seat for another scan of the stairs leading to his row. He would be older now, his father, and broader, pressed by the weight of years and the mantle he carried. There would be more lines on his face now, cut deeply into his flesh with a cruel chisel, and his dark brown hair would be dusted with gray. His badge would rest on his hip, not his barrel chest, but it would gleam just as brightly in the sun. He would move more slowly, too, almost gingerly. Pop swore it was just the ordinary aches and pains of the job, but Ma suspected it was the onset of arthritis, and he thought she was right.

But there was no one on the stairs now, not even a peanut vendor. An empty nacho container cartwheeled down the steps on a drifting breeze, dried leaves on November pavement, and he shuddered.

_Not even baseball can bring him to you anymore. The magical thread has been severed, taxed beyond reasonable endurance. You are not a child any longer, and he is no longer bound to protect you or even pretend to care. You're on your own now, Donnie boy._

_Diana would have come with you, _the timid voice interjected. _She would have loved this. She always wanted to catch a ballgame. She told you so the night you came home from Yankee Stadium, breathless with excitement and hoarse from screaming. You had peanut shells under your fingernails and a souvenir ball in your hand. She wanted to know everything, and so you told her, recounted everything from the first pitch to the last out. What you couldn't remember, you made up, and if she questioned your thrilling account of nearly catching six foul balls but for the punks who muscled in on your action, she was too polite to say so or to point out that if punks had really threatened you, your father would have cheerfully split skulls. _

_She listened in wide-eyed silence, and when you told her for the fifth time about Dave Winfield's towering homerun in the top of the sixth, she sighed wistfully and said, _I wish I coulda gone, but I don't got boy parts.

You were in a good mood that night, high on sugar and flush with a Yankees victory, and so you promised her you'd take her to see a game someday, when you had a car or a job or both and could afford it. It was another promise you never kept, because by the time you acquired those things, she was dead and buried.

Suddenly, he no longer had any appetite for peanuts. They sprouted from beneath the earth where the dead were buried, nurtured in the wet and damp and rotting flesh of yesterday. He was certain he could taste his sister on his tongue, and he spat the mouthful of peanuts into the bag, where they glistened, slick with spittle and yellow as diseased flesh. His stomach roiled dangerously, and he crumpled the sack and tossed it to the ground at his feet.

The timid voice was right, though. She would have loved this. She would have sat in her seat and let her feet dangle bonelessly amid the detritus of the ballpark-straws and soda lids and crumpled sacks of boiled peanuts, the paper cones of cotton candy. He would have bought her some of the latter, and maybe a soda, too, and she would have watched the line drives and bobbles to first in sticky-lipped fascination. He would have explained to her the finer points of pinch-hitting, and when there was a break in the action, he would have told her that there were things in life that hurt far worse than getting hit in the privates with a dodgeball. She would believe him, too, because once upon a time, she had thought he hung the moon.

He saw her, then, in the seat that was supposed to be his father's. Not as the leggy beauty of eighteen that he had always imagined she would be, but as the thirteen-year-old kid she had been, gangle-kneed and scrawny, with scabby knees and dirty lavender socks and a hooded sweatshirt that swallowed her narrow face and made her look like Red Riding Hood.

She smiled at him. "Hey, Donnie, what's that guy doin'?" She pointed at the catcher, who was crouched behind home plate and judiciously adjusting his nutsack.

"Well, he's s'posed to be givin' the pitcher a pitch, but right now, it looks like he's inspectin' his plums." His voice was tight and strangled in his throat, and his eyes burned.

"Oh." Then, "It hurts havin' boy privates, don't it?"

He snorted and swiped his stinging eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, Di, it does."

"Hey, buddy," said the man in the seat behind him, "who the fuck ya talkin' to, eh?"

He blinked. There was no one in the seat beside him, of course, and there never had been.

He scrubbed his face with his trembling hands, swallowed the lump in his throat, and went back to watching the players as they scurried around their fading field of dreams.


End file.
